What was a book in early modern England? Material Texts in Early Modern England focuses on neglected bibliographical cultures, including cutting, destruction, recycling, and errors. It explores how authors including Herbert, Milton, and Cavendish responded to this rich bibliographical context.
'Smyth - one of our best and most inventive readers of textual materiality - has answers that affirm and often dazzle ? Material Texts in Early Modern England is lively and engaging throughout, but Smyth's insights can be striking when he takes risks or otherwise breaks with disciplinary decorum. The revelatory chapter on waste flirts with radical anti-intentionalism in reading detached leaves and stubs from Astrophel and Stella alongside an unrelated 'host' book, yet it also locates patterns of textual recycling in the record of extant binder's waste that will fascinate empirically minded scholars. Regularly in Smyth's handling, some aspect of the textual habitus that seems mundane or incidental to literary study is quickened with meaning.' Jeffrey Todd Knight, Review of English Studies
